Month: September 2009

Categories
Other Haunts This Just In

Other Haunts – Monster Cereal

Ain’t pop culture grand? This blog is a loving collection of ephemera related to those monster-themed cereals of the 70’s. Remember them? They were just a bit too sugary for my taste but I remember tolerating “Frankenberry.” I *really* wanted the monsters themselves in their black and white murk and glory not these pastel pastiches, but honestly how horrifying can you really make breakfast? This blog allows you to relive the fun with none of the sugar crash.

Evidently, these little carbo-bombs are still available though not at the local mega-mart. I heard not too long ago on the Rue Morgue Radio podcast that one of the interns there will periodically buy a case off eBay and gorge himself into a diabetic coma.

http://monsterscereal.blogspot.com/

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #232 – That Deadly Gelatin Garbage

(Male, 20’s) Weird but strangely terrifying. This bit happened at the end of a relatively normal dream about driving a car around with my girlfriend. We were in a small town, semi-rural area and were heading back into the residential area when I saw this guy holding a trash can. He was shaking the can vigorously, like he was obsessed with getting something out of the can and into this other trash can. The guy with the trash can didn’t live at the house, I don’t think because there was someone else inside the front door watching the whole thing. The guy in the house kept the glass door closed though, like he knew there was something dangerous about what was happening.

“…there was also that slightly weird sense that the gelatin might have been alive…”

I got out of the car and walked closer to investigate. The guy was holding one of those old style metal trashcans and inside it was something strange. It was a cube of some vivid blue gelatin, roughly six inches to a side. It was firmly stuck to the bottom of the can so no matter how violently the guy shook the can, the gelatin only wiggled back and forth. However there was also that slightly weird sense that I always have with jello that it might have been alive, that it might have been holding on. The other weird thing about the cube of gelatin was that it was glowing slightly and for some reason, this made me think of radiation. As I write this down, it reminds me of the way a lot of the ghosts are drawn on Scooby-doo with that eerie glow.

And about this time, I realize that the guy who is shaking the can like crazy actually IS crazy. He turns to me and starts ranting and raving about “Just try to call the ambulance now.” And when I look at his face, I realize also that all of his flesh is this same transparent glowing blue gelatin. His clothes were just dense enough to hide this, I guess. I knew that if he touched me that I would start to turn into this blue goo as well so I started to run away down the street. But the guy drops the trash can and advances on my girlfriend who is basically trapped in the car.

That’s when I woke up, right at that moment when I’m still wanting to run in terror yet also needing to protect my girlfriend.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #231 – Zombie Skunk

(Male, 30’s) This nightmare I had kind of cracks me up when I write it down but there was nothing funny about it at the time. I’m almost embarrassed by how silly it sounds.

“…Seemed a pretty awful situation. …”

I was in the house where I grew up, a place I haven’t even seen in like 10 years. There were people on the front lawn who were doing something. I went out there to yell at them. They were painting the countertop of their kitchen cabinets. The paint was this hideous green, like a yellow green, a color from a 70’s rental property. I told them to get lost. And then there was a policeman who told me they’d be OK. See, their landlord was kicking them out because the building was being foreclosed and soon to be demolished so they were down on their luck. I asked the cop what was with the countertop and he said that the landlord was making them fix up the place or they’d lose their security deposit. Seemed a pretty awful situation.

I looked around the neighborhood and it was a decaying, urban nightmare. There were multi-story buildings that looked like they’d been bombed. Whole walls were missing, not just the windows which were all smashed out. The cop and I walked around a bit and there was just block after block of wasteland, tall buildings ready to collapse under their own weight.

“…”…It was a zombie. And it was a skunk. How much worse can you get from that!…”…”

That’s when we saw the skunk. It jumped out at the cop and started running for him like it wanted to bite him. The skunk was sealed in a plastic bag and chunks of its flesh were falling off. The cop was stupid, just standing there but I knew to start running away immediately. I knew somehow that this skunk was infected with the zombie plague, probably the same kind of epidemic that was causing the whole world to go to hell. The scientists has sealed it in a plastic bag to keep it safe because in this future skunks were an endangered specie. They were trying to protect the genetic material even though it was sick, er, I guess, dead. It was a zombie. And it was a skunk. How much worse can you get from that!

So I started running because I was afraid of what would happen when the cop turned to a zombie. Every pile of rubble I passed seemed to have another zombie creature creeping out of it. Possums, squirrels, a mangy old cat. I was just running and running, hopping over piles of rubble trying to get away and the terror was all around me.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #230 – Shot AGAIN

(Male, 40’s) Twice this week, I’ve had dreams that involved being shot or nearly shot with a handgun. I have woken up with my heart just pounding. The second one wasn’t very remarkable apart from getting shot – I should probably mention that I don’t own a handgun and I’ve never been shot, nor is it one of my great fears.

However.

“…I get him to put the knife down…”

In the first nightmare, I am visiting my grandmother’s house, a grandmother who’s been dead for decades now. Her house was never in a great part of town and it’s only gotten worse, like far worse over time. I am responsible for cleaning out her stuff, all her furniture and belongings. When I go to the door my daughter greets me and I’m a little shocked that she’s there and not at college. I ask her if she’s alone in the house and she says no. And then I ask if she’s safe. She shakes her head like she’s answering a different question, “Oh Daddy, it’s not like that at all.” I ask her to go and wait outside with her mom in the car. I enter the house and the first thing I notice is that there is a huge whole in one wall like someone has driven a car into it. And there’s a man with a knife. I ask him if he’s OK. I offer to get him some food. I get him to put the knife down. I explain that I’ve got to get rid of the stuff in the house. And he starts acting as if it all belongs to him simply because he’s in the house. I simply reach over and take the knife from where he’s set it down and I throw it behind me because in a fair fight I’m pretty sure I could take this guy. “No, you don’t own any of this stuff and you better get moving before I call the cops.” He says he’s got a gun in his pocket, which I think is pretty unlikely but I don’t want to take the chance so I jump him. We wrestle. He’s trying to get his hand in his pocket. I keep hitting him, trying to knock him out. All of a sudden a shot is fired. I don’t hear it as much as I feel it shooting straight through my heart. It felt more like I was getting an electric shock. I woke up with my heart simply racing, pounding hard like I actually had been in a fight.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #229 – Doomed Expedition

(Male, 30’s) I don’t know if this really counts as a “nightmare” but it was a pretty bad dream where I was pretty sure that I was going to die.

“…It’s very likely you’re going to die…”

I had somehow gotten involved with an expedition that was either going to climb a very tall mountain or go to the South Pole, very possibly both. We were on the runway of this desolate spot, not so much as a building, just an expanse of tarmac. There were about a dozen guys, all very serious and all very busy loading boxes onto a plane. They were all dressed in thick suits, that reminded me a lot of the kind of thing that parachuters wear with lots of webbing and padding. The suits were all olive drab like military uniforms.

Some of the boxes were marked “Cashmere” because, at least in the dream, cashmere is very warm for the thickness. Other boxes were marked “Non-cashmere wool” because wool, again at least in the dream, keeps its warmth even when wet. Everyone was busy and I was just in the way. Finally I got the attention of someone. He looked a lot like a guy I work with in fact. He said “Look, kid, I don’t know how you got yourself involved with this but none of us have any time to teach you how to survive. We’re mostly ex-marines, in fact. This isn’t a vacation. It’s very likely you’re going to die and if you don’t get out of the way, you’re going to cause other people to die.”

There was nothing I could do. I just stood around and waited to board the airplane, and eventually freeze to death.